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Friday, April 27, 2018

Finish the Sentence Friday - Photo Share Friday

Photos can be very powerful, in that they can play upon our emotions, sometimes moving us to tears, other times causing us to laugh, or propelling us to action such as donating funds to a cause, or giving of our time to volunteer work. Sometimes photos will pull us back to a certain place and time in our lives or in the lives of others. Looking back is good as long as one is still able to look forward and not get stuck where one doesn't want to be.

My mother's hands are resting partially on a lavender napkin placed upon her lap. She is sitting in a wheelchair and is wearing a multicolored bib of purple, mauve, and white daisies printed on a dark blue background. Part of her long-sleeved blouse with a multicolored print on a medium blue background is visible as is portion of her Micky Mouse watch with the large numbers. Her hands are sans wedding rings because the rings no longer fit over her swollen knuckles.

These hands have served her and others well

With these hands she brushed her curly hair and rubbed hand cream on her hands, cold cream on her face, and a rub-on deodorant under her arms before more convenient deodorants became available. She applied a skin cream with a strong medicinal smell to remove her makeup. (Later on that brand of skin cream had a much milder smell.) With her hands she applied a bit of makeup using the pan-cake compressed type followed by a just a touch of moist rouge on her cheeks and some red lipstick on her lips. She never did use any kind of eye makeup.With her hands she lifted me in my preschool years into a metal wash tub on a counter so I could receive my weekly bath. There was no bathtub in the house where we were living at that time. It wasn't uncommon in that day for a child to just have a bath once a week with spit baths (common term for a quick sponge bath) in between.

She used her hands to lift sopping wet clothes from the wringer washing machine by using a sawed off broomstick and then carefully feeding them between the two rollers to squeeze out the dirty water. The clothes dropped into a sink filled with clean water. After draining the dirty water from the tub, it was refilled with clean rinse water and she fed the clothes that had been soaking back into the washer for the agitating rinse. Then it was time for her to feed the clothes back through the rollers. They dropped into a now drained sink where they waited to be hung on the clothes line. With all that bending, she often used her hands to rub her lower aching back.Many of the clothes that the family wore were made of cotton, so there was lots of ironing that needed to be done. The steam iron hadn't been invented yet, and there were no spray bottles, so mom just dipped her hands in a pan of water and sprinkled each garment with water before rolling it up. There were some sprinkler bottles available to buy, and sprinkler tops that could be placed on an empty pop bottles, but I don't recall her doing anything other than using her wet fingers to sprinkle the clothes. Once the clothes had been sprinkled, it was important to get the ironing done soon, so the clothes didn't get moldy.

This 10 year old girl with the really short bangs is me standing in front of the kitchen table piled with sprinkled clothes ready to be ironed. Mom had written on the back of the photo "Big ironing to do on the farm." Perhaps adding my name was an afterthought.

Mom got on her hands and her knees to get the floors clean using a wet rag and some piney smelling cleaner. Later on she started using some of the sponge mops that had come on the market, but for many years getting on her hands and knees and using a rag was how she approached getting the linoleum floors clean. (She laid the linoleum tile floor as well as the rolled linoleum floors in the house.)Since mom worked outside the home most of her life in order to support the farm, she used many skills she had learned in high school that involved using her hands: taking dictation using shorthand, typing, on-the-job training of operating the telephone switchboard in a large furniture store, operating a bookkeeping machine and other office equipment.Because of the abundance of fruit and vegetables in our area as well as on the farm, mom used her hands often late into the evenings to preserve food for the winter by either canning it or packaging it for freezing and then transporting the items to be frozen to a freezer locker. (We didn't have a freezer, nor was there room for one.)Like most girls of my mom's era, she learned skills such as embroidery, crocheting, and sewing and made things to put into her hope chest. Doilies were commonly used on top of furniture pieces then, so she made a lot of them. Much later on, after she retired, she learned to quilt, and made quite a few of them.

One of mom's doilies embroidered with a wicker basket filled with blue and red flowers and green leaves. The doily is crocheted with a variegated lavender and white edging. For the photo the doily is placed on a purple blanket shown on both sides and the bottom.

Never one to be stopped by a lack of knowledge, mom used the local library to learn how to put wiring into the attic so her children could have lights in what would become their bedrooms. When typewriters were becoming a thing of the past, even though she was now retired and a widow, she took a course at a community college to learn how to use a computer and then proceeded to use those skills as she served in church responsibilities and as she pursued an interest in family history research. Mom learned later in life how to reupholster some furniture when the furniture started looking worn. When she was a little girl, she learned to play a little bit on a pump organ her mother played by ear, but after she retired she decided to purchase a piano and take piano lessons. She later used those skills while serving a church mission. Both she and her mother like the song Danny Boy. I'm not sure if she practiced this on the piano, but I know she tried to play many of the pieces of music she liked. The following is an especially beautiful a cappella rendition sung by Libera.One time mom used her hands to help as a sow, possibly a gilt, delivered her piglets. Dad was working an evening shift and wasn't home. Mom went to the barn off and on during the evening to see how the sow was doing. The piglets began coming and mom got a heat lamp set up and made sure they were safe and tended to as the sow continued to deliver her piglets. (Occasionally a sow will accidentally step on a piglet especially if it is a gilt giving birth for the first time.) I think the sow below just wanted to rest her head for a moment, and her little piglet didn't realize he should have stayed where he was. We never saw a sow on our farm behave like this one.

There were times when mom's hands and body should have been resting from a busy day of working, but instead she would be found painting a room of the house when the kids were asleep and her husband wasn't home yet from an evening shift at work.At bedtime when I was very young, my mom taught me to say Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and how to clasp my hands. She also held me on her lap and read me a story about when and how Jesus was born. Although her own parents were a little fractured in what they considered appropriate Christian behaviors, and her own marriage was not bound by religious beliefs in common, I felt that what she read to me when I was that little girl, she believed, and I remember that special feeling I had when she read to me and held me in her arms.

12 comments:

Aw, I think a mother's hands and arms are truly such a special gift to all their kids. As I still truly always will never forget my own, her hugs and all she has done over the years with her own hands for us. And I also hope and pray my own girls know and treasure this about me their own mom. Thanks for sharing all your memories of your own mom here with us today, too :)

What a lovely post about the many things your mom used her hands for. I often feel like we miss out a bit on having things so ready for purchase. While it's an easier life, there's something to be said for having to wring clothes through a wringer, for sewing the doilies (the one in your photograph is gorgeous - when I think of doilies I think of the round ones that are just plain lace as that's the type my grandma made but the flower embroidery is so pretty). I love how you ended it too. When Tucker was a baby, and then toddler, I took different photos of us holding hands with the idea that I'd frame them consecutively next to one another in a large frame (which I haven't yet done). Thanks for joining us again this week!

Thank you, Kristi. My mother-in-law made a lot of crocheted doilies. Mom also made some, but most of them wore out from so many years of use. I remember her using starch to shape the ruffles just so.What a lovely idea to frame all those photos of you holding hands with Tucker! Possibly making a video and using the hands to lead into the different years of his life might be an idea also.

Wow to all your mom's responsibilities! I love these stories of yours that go back in time with they way things were done. So much harder then and now as it's takes mere minutes to mop the floors and except for folding, laundry practically does itself. I was taught the "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer by my grandmother. I always hated the "If I should die" part.

I'm glad that you enjoy the stories. I suppose there will come a time when our stories will see so very outdated to those who come after us, especially since inventions are happening at an accelerating rate.

I think I must have been so taken by the sing song rhythm of the verse, I didn't even think about the words. Perhaps that was better, because otherwise I'd probably have had nightmares.

This one gave me a lovely sniffle, because I'm almost positive my grandmother had that watch. What a photo to show those hands, which have done SO much, and to have that special piece of personality peeking out. Really awesome. I love what you did with this.

My mom got that watch when it became difficult for her to see the numbers on her smaller faced watch.

I have seen some beautiful greeting cards of close ups of hands of the elderly and wanted to be sure to get one of my mom's hands. I also wanted to write about these memories I have of her while my mind is still sharp.